Yes, I, introvert that I am notwithstanding, will be doing yet another reading following the (swiftly approaching) reading at the Augur launch party:

On September 20th I’ll be reading at the ChiSeries Noir Night, alongside other authors from the Pac’n Heat anthology. (Full lineup and details at the above link to the event.) Should be a fun night, and if you’re Toronto-based or Toronto-local you should totally come out for it.

And yes, I’ll be reading different works at the Augur launch party and the Chiseries Noir Night — I’ll be reading from “Change as Seen Through an Orrery of Celestial Fire” at the former and “All Them Empty Alleys” at the latter. I mean, hey, if you want to make it out to both readings to listen, talk, heckle, whatever, by all means do. I’ll obviously be there. Will you? :D

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In just a little under two weeks, on August 30th, Augur‘s Preview issue goes live to read online. Said Preview issue will contain a reprint of my story “Change as Seen Through an Orrery of Celestial Fire,” alongside a stellar lineup of work spanning fiction, poetry, and comics. :D

August 30th will also see a launch for the mag in Toronto (at No One Writes to the Colonel, starting at 7 pm)! The launch is partly to introduce the Preview issue, but also as a kickoff for Augur‘s upcoming crowdfunding campaign. And an opportunity to have a generally good time and hang out, as all launches ought be.

I’ll be reading at said launch, along with others (not sure of the full lineup yet, but it’ll be announced at the link above), and I understand that the launch will have raffles and limited edition zines as well. Going to be a fun night. You should totally come out for it if you’re free!

Oddly enough I’ll have more appearance news on top of this soon, despite my general practice of heading out to see other people do interesting things at launches and readings. I’ll talk about the next thing down the line once that’s public/posted, but for now mark the Augur launch in your calendar and come have a good time with us on the 30th. :)

We’re ecstatic to finally have this one out in the world. This issue just kept throwing up hurdles to pull together — you may have seen our extended/emergency calls for first non-fiction and then fiction after our standard submissions period was done. If it wasn’t one thing it was another, all the way up to taking all the content live on the website. (And, oh, there’s a story about that too … ) But the three of us (Andrew Wilmot, Chinelo Onwualu, and myself) finally fucking did it, with the help of some truly stellar contributors and their equally amazing work.

Issue 2 encompasses a broad range of styles and tones, all the way from glorious, pitch-perfect humour all the way to high fantasy misandry. (Yes. Really.) We fucking love the issue that came together, and we think you will too. :D

This being borne out by the fact that all the reviews we’ve had of the issue so far have been highly positive. And as always it’s wonderful to watch readers discover something they connect with and love deeply. That never gets old for me — connecting people with amazing work, creators, and artists. :)

But, seriously: there’s an amazing issue of fiction, non-fiction, and some fucking glorious cover art to be enjoyed — what are you still doing reading this post? The issue’s free, go read it already!

But it’s a day, as mentioned last post, with enough different news to warrant two posts rather than piling things together as I normally do. Which I may stop doing generally, just to make news easier to find on here. We’ll see.

In any case, the reason for a second post today? (And one worthy of yet another shocked face post header.) I just yesterday ran across a post on Book Riot from a couple of days back, wherein Margaret Kingsbury pulled together a fantastic recommendations post: 100 Must-Read SFF Short Story Collections.

Covering 60 single author collections and 40 anthologies, it’s a deeply impressive post, wide-ranging in what it covers, and includes a number of books I love and overall just an extraordinary collection of writers and editors, primarily contemporary.

In truth, it’s been a good few months of news with an award nomination, Anathema‘s second issue coming together (and dropping August 1st), and a number of other things coming together that I can’t talk about yet. But I thought much of the news for THoM was over and done with it having come out almost two years ago now. I’m delighted to be wrong in that. :D

I’d urge you to go have a look at the list if you haven’t already. It’s a shockingly good reading list. And contains the work of a number of friends and colleagues, all of whom I’m delighted to see on there, and who you should be reading.

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You can tell I’ve been busy when I’m writing posts a month apart (normal posting schedule around here is once every couple weeks, give or take). And, indeed, the last couple months have been exceedingly full. And though things aren’t exactly easing up for the next few weeks in terms of deadlines, there is news. Hell, enough for this post and one after it. :)

But speaking to immediate things:

With now less than one week to go until the release of Anathema‘s second issue on August 1st, we’ve put together our usual ToC and cover reveal for the coming issue. And damn but we love the way that issue came together, visually and otherwise. :D

Why? Because aside from having some fucking fantastic content in the August issue, this is the cover for Issue 2:

Hey everyone, how you doing? A belated Canada Day to one and all! (See the above paragraph for quick thoughts on same.)

It’s been a while. I’ve been under a crush of freelance work and pulling together the next Anathema or would have posted something sooner. I trust you’ve all missed me? :)

Still in the throes of being fairly busy, so popping in to note that while there’s all this work going on on my end, there’s also acknowledgement of existing work to report. And it’s an absolutely lovely mention:

Yesterday, in honour of Canada Day, A.C. Wise (whose fiction, reviews, and other content you should be reading) put up a blog post, More Than Margaret, to highlight some of their favourite speculative fiction in a mixture of things recent and less so. The post covers novels, anthologies, and short fiction, and there’s a fantastic mix of colleagues and friends in the field represented, all of whom I’m delighted to be mentioned alongside. :D

My own contribution to that list is “And in That Sheltered Sea, a Colossus” from Shimmer #36. I always love seeing the Titan and Serpent stories get a nod or a review. Still working on selling the other five currently written, so hopefully there’ll be more of them available to read soon. But it’s been so good to see both that one and “Until There is Only Hunger” land so well. Indeed, in some cases very well given the feedback they’ve had and the award nomination for the latter — which I’m still trying to wrap my head around.

Now, technically, I’ve also got stories in four of the anthologies/anthology series listed in the post (Tesseracts 19: Superhero Universe, Masked Mosaic, Dead North, and Fractured). And that’s a weird realization — I don’t tend to think about the number of stories I’ve had published since I first managed to sell something back in 2011, or where they’ve come out, but apparently about half my fiction sales have been to Canadian markets? US markets always loom so large when submitting, and yet I’ve clearly been paying equal mind to Canadian markets and just not realized it.

Canada has a complicated history with its own cultural output, part and parcel of which is a decidedly nationalist/protectionist approach for the last fifty years that’s slowly breaking down or being circumvented (Elaine Dewar’s The Handover is an excellent primer for the inception and failures of that national policy), and part of that is absorbing so much American culture. So much so that sometimes you forget how ubiquitous Canadian cultural content is, and how much you participate in it.

Or maybe that’s just me. :)

Either way, it’s a nice discovery to make.

Now go read the list if you haven’t already. There’s some amazing reading there, and all of it Canadian.

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Holy shit. My Titan and Serpent story “Until There is Only Hunger” (published in Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling, edited by Monica Valentinelli & Jaym Gates) got longlisted for the 2017 Sunburst Award. I, uh, was not expecting that? I mean obviously, but since the Sunburst Awards don’t notify nominees ahead of time it was in all respects a surprise.

I may be excessively fond of that story, but it’s another thing entirely to have an award jury say: “Why yes, this thing deserves to be longlisted for an award.”

So. Yeah.

Quite an impressive longlist across the three categories, and I’m there with friends and colleagues, and looking at a number of excellent stories and novels on that ballot, and dear god the CBC posted about the longlist. O_o

Madeline Ashby and Madeleine Thien are rightly headlining that article, but god damn it my work showed up in an article/press release appearing on the CBC. I’m just going to enjoy this moment because I’d already read all but two of the short stories longlisted and I don’t expect to win my category.

But I’m now a Sunburst nominee! Been longlisted for fiction in a contest before, but never for an award (been award-nominated elsewhere as an editor, but it doesn’t have the same feel), so that’s thoroughly awesome! :D

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This is the Website of Michael Matheson (Writer)

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